Economic Facts and Fallacies

Economic Facts and Fallacies is designed for people who want to understand economic issues without getting bogged down in economic jargon, graphs, or political rhetoric. Writing in a lively manner that does not require any prior knowledge of economics, Thomas Sowell exposes some of the most popular fallacies about economic issues, including many that are widely disseminated in the media and by politicians.

The Science of Fear: Why We Fear the Things We Should Not - and Put Ourselves in Great Danger

From terror attacks to the War on Terror, bursting real-estate bubbles to crystal meth epidemics, sexual predators to poisonous toys from China, our list of fears seems to be exploding. And yet, we are the safest and healthiest humans in history. Irrational fear is running amok, and often with tragic results. In the months after 9/11, when people decided to drive instead of fly - believing they were avoiding risk - road deaths rose by 1,595. Those lives were lost to fear.

What did you like best about The Science of Fear? What did you like least?

Part 1 of this book (as it is divided into 2 files downloads) was not very enjoyable; I have heard it better explainations in other books. However, the 2nd part (i.e. the 2nd file download) was a lot better, so I found in the end that I liked the book.

The 8th Habit: From Effectiveness to Greatness

The 8th Habit is the answer to the soul's yearning for greatness, the organization's imperative for significance and superior results, and humanity's search for its "voice". Profound, compelling, and stunningly timely, this groundbreaking new audiobook of next level thinking gives a clear way to finally tap the limitless value-creation promise of the Knowledge Worker Age.

Jane Eyre [AudioGo Edition] (Unabridged)

The work tells the story of Jane's early life, her experience at Lowood School and as a governess. Her refusal to accept Rochester's love on any but her own strictly moral terms is a passionate cry for independence.

Jane Eyre is a story about how the moral life is the one to be lived. But it is also the story of how sometimes morals can be enforced with excess harshness. Lastly, this is a story of Romance where a good end comes to Jane, after all her trials.

The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat: and Other Clinical Tales

Oliver Sacks' The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat tells the stories of individuals afflicted with fantastic perceptual and intellectual aberrations: patients who have lost their memories and with them the greater part of their pasts; who are no longer able to recognize people and common objects; who are stricken with violent tics and grimaces or who shout involuntary obscenities; whose limbs have become alien; who have been dismissed as retarded yet are gifted with uncanny artistic or mathematical talents.

What did you love best about The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat: and Other Clinical Tales?

I like the fact that this book was written by a doctor who sees his patients as persons, not things. These are real case histories, and these people are suffering from various forms of brain damage and defects. It is interesting to learn how they are coping, and how their personalities are being effected.It is also so fascinating to learn how much our organic physiology effects our personality.

What was one of the most memorable moments of The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat: and Other Clinical Tales?

The book ends by pointing our how many ways one of the authors patents could have their very special gifts employed in fruitful work, but also points out that instead the patents will probably (like many others) be overlooked and discarded for life to the back room of a public hospital.

Did you have an extreme reaction to this book? Did it make you laugh or cry?

It made me happy to know that some doctors really do care, and see potential, for the handicapped. It made me sad to think that so many people are discarded.

Inbound Marketing: Get Found Using Google, Social Media, and Blogs

To connect with today's buyer, you need to stop pushing your message out and start pulling your customers in. The rules of marketing have changed and the key to winning is to use this change to your advantage. If you've wondered how to get found in Google or why blogs and social media sites like Facebook and Twitter are important, Inbound Marketing is the audiobook for you.

This book quite useful for driving home 1 point: if you want to succeed at inbound marketing, just be popular.

People are getting sick and tired of spam and traditional advertising: that won't make you popular.
However, if you're "DARC" people will follow you. Thus you are: a "Digital" citizen so you are subscribed to all the social networks (facebook, twitter, etc.); "Analytical" and thus use internet tools to track your popularity; someone with "Reach" and thus references to you and your content are splashed all over the net (social networks, top search engine results position, etc); associated with remarkable "Content" (web pages, etc.) worth consuming. Thus you are POPULAR.

A Whole New Mind: Why Right-Brainers Will Rule the Future

Lawyers. Accountants. Software Engineers. That what Mom and Dad encouraged us to become. They were wrong. Gone is the age of "left-brain" dominance. The future belongs to a different kind of person with a different kind of mind: designers, inventors, teachers, storytellers - creative and emphatic "right-brain" thinkers whose abilities mark the fault line between who gets ahead and who doesn't.

Contains a lot of information about the importance of art, holistic thinking, and spirituality in a world of material abundance. Deals with the issue of left brain aptitudes being farmed off to offshore labor, computer automation.

Finally, points out the importance of discovering meaning in what we do, and having purpose.

Watership Down

Fiver could sense danger. Something terrible was going to happen to the warren; he felt sure of it. They had to leave immediately. So begins a long and perilous journey of survival for a small band of rabbits. As the rabbits skirt danger at every turn, we become acquainted with the band, its humorous characters, and its compelling culture, complete with its own folk history and mythos.

Having seen bits of the movie, which are kind of scary (all that killing, fighting, etc), I thought this would be pretty much the same. However some of the rabbits in this story get into a lot of scrapes but in the end just die of old age (I like that :-) )
I think the rabbits in this book are probably just a bit too organized for my liking. For instance, I doubt very much that real rabbits would chew a dog lead to set it free to attack opposing rabbits in a war. ha ha. So given the understanding that rabbits are NOT people, it's not a bad yarn. There is an illusion to a spiritual/mystical side to the rabbits life, and this can be viewed as an allegorical use of the human condition.

The Power of Pull: How Small Moves, Smartly Made, Can Set Big Things in Motion

In a radical break with the past, information now flows like water, and we must learn how to tap into its stream. Individuals and companies can no longer rely on the stocks of knowledge that theyve carefully built up and stored away. Information now flows like water, and we must learn how to tap into the stream.

As I recall this was a interesting book about how open platforms allowing and encouraging collaborative effort, can reap mutual rewards for all participants.

The book begins by pointing out that surfers (i.e. surf board, water, etc.) are able to fast-track improvements in the tricks and techniques by forming communities of collaborative effort. At first these communities were centered around physical locations, and also there is now the internet were they can form virtual communities sharing videos of tricks and info.

Workers are looking for meaning in their work and are moving away from working for big corporations who offer financial reward, but who sack workers according to corporate whims. They are looking for meaning and a cause, and they are finding there is fulfillment to be had within the realm of the virtual communities/platforms with the internet being the technical medium par-excellence for enabling such communities/platforms.

The book brings to mind Malcolm Gladwell's book "The Tipping Point" were its discusses key types of people who may be classified as community "connectors".

It is interesting to note that the "The Female Brain" (by Louann Brizendine) has been found to be geared to community "connection". Although, neither "The Power of Pull" or "The Tipping Point" seem to point out more female "connector" examples male.

Buy-ology: How Everything We Believe About Why We Buy Is Wrong

Why did so many people who took the 'Pepsi challenge' say they preferred Pepsi only to carry on buying Coca-Cola? Why do the majority of anti-smoking campaigns inadvertently encourage people to smoke? Why does the scent of melons help sell electronic products? If you're bewildered by these questions, then Buy-ology will make everything clear.

This is an interesting book about how scanning the brain with MRI and such can reveal much about how fear, desire, and reward centers of the brain work to determine if we a likely to want to "BUY" a product, service, etc.

I found the book interesting at the start where the promise of understanding is first proposed. However, toward the middle of the book, I was beginning to wonder whether the book itself was not just marketing hype of a product which was the author himself.

In the end I was glad I did listen to the whole thing to the end, as the author was able to point out some interesting findings with regard to how the brain works, and how new ways of measuring sample customer response are likely to review population response and the reason for the population response.

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